Doc: Zimmer was Bengals' best defensive coordinator

Jan. 15, 2014

Mike Zimmer is the 15th former Bengals assistant who has become a head coach. / The Enquirer/Jeff Swinger

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This one’s for Chris Crocker, twice resurrected from the depths of his family-room couch, and for Terence Newman, merely resurrected.

It’s for Adam Jones, no longer Pac Man, and Wallace Gilberry, no longer wandering. Each found a home with the Bengals. Player and team were the better for it. It’s for Michael Johnson and Carlos Dunlap, raw recruits becoming polished. Especially Dunlap, whose ability was never questioned, only his mentality.

These are Zim’s guys.

They should be happy for him now. He gave them all first chances and second chances and, in Jones’ case, more chances than that. Now, Mike Zimmer gets his chance.

The Minnesota Vikings are making him their head coach Wednesday, at a point in his career when he was starting to think he’d never be more than a defensive coordinator. That would have been OK with Zimmer. He loved that job. He knew he was good at it. But no one wants to pass through life lugging a bag of What-Ifs.

This one’s for old school demands and venerable sensibilities. You don’t always get what you expect. More often, you get what you put up with. Zimmer got what he expected, because he didn’t put up with much. He didn’t tolerate.

What is the value of a player’s respect for a coach?

What if that player not only respects that coach, but fears him a little as well?

Add to the respect and the fear, admiration and gratitude. What is all that worth?

The Bengals about to find out. The tangible evidence of Zimmer’s impact here is obvious: Four times, his defense ranked in the Top 10 in the league. Despite bad injuries to several good players, it ranked third this year. Less obvious – and arguably more important – were the intangibles.

I've never covered a coach who engendered universal respect among his players, until Zimmer. Zimmer was honest with his players. He told them how good they could be, then drove them to prove him right. No one wanted to let him down. Beyond that, his ability to find and woo useful players given up for done by other teams has been instrumental: Crocker, Newman, Gilberry, Jones.

Zimmer loved to play the shoulder-chip card. “Nobody wanted you guys,’’ he’d say. They swallowed it whole, mostly because Zimmer wasn’t wrong.

He lost Atkins for half of this season, and Leon Hall for longer than that. Newman missed several games. Rey Maualuga missed time. Robert Geathers missed everything. The defense never missed a beat.

You could quibble with the run defense in the San Diego game, and in both the previous playoff losses. Without the defense’s stoutness, there would have been no playoff games. Zimmer’s ability to put together big-game game plans was also good, if not great. Ask Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers this year.

This one’s for Zimmer, who lost his wife on Oct. 6, 2009, when Vikki Zimmer was just 50 years old. He coached three days later, in Baltimore, because coaching was easier than the silence that cloaked him whenever he left Paul Brown Stadium. The day of Vikki Zimmer’s funeral service was heartbreaking and ennobling, both. Close to 100 thick-necked players squeezed into suits, then pews at the Church of the Immaculata in Mt. Adams.

No one could say what effect Vikki’s death had on Zimmer’s players. It’s worth noting that in the next 11 games after she passed, the Bengals defense allowed an average of just 16 points. In seven of the 11, the opponents scored fewer than 20 points.

This one, too, is for the good notion that a man who offered so many chances to others, finally got one himself. The Bengals couldn’t have kept him. They weren’t going to make him head coach, and ask Marvin Lewis to take a seat upstairs. The NFL doesn’t work that way. Mike Brown especially.

One peril of a successful team is the constant possibility that its assistant coaches will be poached. This is a brave new word for the Bengals, and a sign they’re doing things right. That doesn’t make losing Mike Zimmer any easier.